INFEWS/T1: Climate-induced Extremes on the Food, Energy, Water Nexus (C-FEWS) and the Role of Engineered and Natural Infrastructure

了解、缓解和适应物理气候变化和极端天气已经成为美国的一项战略任务。由于食物-能源-水系统（FEWS）的相互交织性质，气候脆弱性很可能成为本世纪环境和社会的主要风险。本研究的重点是美国两个具有重要战略意义的地区，即东北部和中西部，这两个地区的人口和GDP加起来占美国人口和GDP的近一半。在这些地区，景观得到了集中管理和改造；而且，影响全球粮食生产、生物燃料、能源安全和减少污染的重大决策需要关键的科学支持。为了帮助应对这些挑战，该项目将创建一个多区域分析框架，旨在识别和评估在工程（EI）和自然基础设施（NI）背景下对极端天气的响应方案。该框架能够系统地评估未来的政策选择，这些政策选择将确定区域FEWS适应从现在到2100年不断变化的极端气候和其他环境压力的能力。这项工作联合了一个来自学术界和政府的跨学科研究小组，他们将把一套现有的模型连接起来，模拟气候动力学、生物地球化学、工程系统和经济学。人们越来越多地认识到传统工程在可持续提供食物、能源和水方面的局限性，推动了这项工作的开展，这种情况可能会通过结合基于自然的解决方案得到改善。全面的框架对于揭示这些机会至关重要，特别是考虑到未来的极端气候及其与其他环境压力因素的相互作用。两种假设指导着这项研究。第一种是诊断，第二种是预后。两者都涉及气候趋势和极端问题，以及这些问题如何通过FEWS产生影响。假设-1是回顾性的（1950年至今），并产生了关于FEWS如何“连接在一起”以及其对气候冲击的敏感性如何从短期事件和长期趋势中演变的知识。假设2下的预测工作评估了未来几十年潜在的干预措施和气候适应策略，包括替代技术部署、NI管理以及经济和监管政策。这项工作联合了一个跨学科的团队，他们将现有模型和数据集独特地结合起来，将使假设检验、确定因果关系和对未来做出预测方面取得快速进展。该项目旨在量化FEWS的阈值、反馈和紧急特性，以应对气候变化及其极端情况、环境压力因素以及不断变化的经济、技术和政策压力。该项目还分析了从次年到世纪的时间尺度上的短期和遗留影响，并将整合多个学科的FEWS动态，因为它考虑了物理、工程、粮食安全和经济子系统。这些多维研究将使用现有计算框架的定制版本来执行。虽然最初的重点是在东北和中西部，但试点模拟实验和讲习班将制定一项战略，将这一区域工作推广到全国范围。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Understanding, mitigating, and adapting to physical climate change and extreme weather have become a strategic imperative across the U.S. Owing to the interwoven nature of the food-energy-water systems (FEWS), climate vulnerabilities are likely to express themselves as major risks to the environment and society well into the century. This study focuses on two strategically important regions of the U.S., the Northeast and Midwest, which together account for nearly half of the U.S. population and GDP. In these regions, landscapes are intensively managed and transformed; and, major decisions affecting global food production, biofuels, energy security and pollution abatement require critical scientific support. To help meet these challenges, this project will create a multi-regional analysis framework designed to identify and evaluate response options to extreme weather in the context of engineered (EI) and natural infrastructure (NI). The framework enables a systematic assessment of future policy options that will define the capacity of the regional FEWS to adapt to changing climate extremes and other environmental stressors from present-day to 2100. The work unites an interdisciplinary research team from academia and government that will link a set of existing models to simulate climate dynamics, biogeochemistry, engineered systems, and economics. The work is driven by a growing consensus on the limits of traditional engineering to sustainably deliver food, energy, and water, a situation that could potentially be improved by incorporating nature-based solutions. Comprehensive frameworks are essential to reveal such opportunities, especially in light of future climate extremes and their interaction with other environmental stressors.Two hypotheses guide this research. The first is diagnostic and the second prognostic. Both address the issue of climate trends and extremes and how these reverberate through the FEWS. Hypothesis-1is retrospective (1950-present) and generates knowledge about how the FEWS is "wired together" and how its sensitivity to climate shocks evolves out of shorter-term events and longer-term trends. The prognostic work under hypothesis-2 assesses potential interventions and climate adaptation strategies, including alternate technology deployments, NI management, and economic and regulatory policies over the next several decades. The work unites an interdisciplinary team whose unique combination of existing models and data sets will enable rapid progress in hypotheses testing, identifying causal links and making projections into the future. This project is designed to quantify FEWS thresholds, feedbacks and emergent properties as the system responds to climate change and its extremes, to environmental stressors, and to shifting economics, technologies and policy forcings. The project also analyzes short-term and legacy effects over time scales from sub-annual to century and will integrate FEWS dynamics across multiple disciplines as it considers physical, engineered, food security and economic sub-systems. These multi-dimensional studies will be executed using a customized version of an existing computational framework. While the initial focus is on the Northeast and the Midwest, pilot modeling experiments and workshops will develop a strategy to generalize this regional work to the national scale.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.